Lamps Plus turns on a new mobile strategy

The retailer launches a mobile site and adds QR codes to products in stores.

Lamps Plus Inc., a retailer of lighting, home décor and furniture, has responded to increasing e-commerce sales and traffic via mobile devices by launching a mobile-optimized site.

The new site, built by m-commerce technology vendor Branding Brand, offers user reviews, detailed product specifications, videos, wish lists that consumers can save for later and the store’s entire 40,000-item catalog of inventory.

The mobile site offers all the information on the regular Lamps Plus site, but is designed for mobile navigation and to load quickly on a mobile device, the retailer says.

“We’ve never had a mobile-optimized web site before but we did notice orders coming from mobile devices,” says Angela Hsu, vice president of Internet business and marketing at Lamps Plus, No. 178 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 guide, which operates bricks-and-mortar stores as well as LampsPlus.com and LampsPlusOpenBox.com . “This is a huge opportunity for us since our web site was very hard to shop via web-enabled phones prior to our new mobile site.” Hsu won’t say exactly how much traffic to the Lamps Plus e-commerce site was coming from mobile devices, except to say that mobile traffic exceeded 10% of all traffic.

Lamps Plus mobile site also features a geolocation tool to connect customers to local store information and help them find what they are looking for in one of the retailer’s more than 40 locations. Additionally, the site has a feature that allows a customer to find a nearby store then enter her name, phone number and e-mail and receive a call back within 10 minutes from a customer service associate who will discuss her lighting needs and options.

Lamps Plus has also added QR codes to product tags for mobile customers to use in store. When a customer scans the QR code, product dimensions, customer reviews and other information about the item appear on her phone and she has the option to add the product to her wish list.

Since launching the mobile site, Lamps Plus’ mobile traffic to popular product category pages and to store locator information has increased, Hsu says. “What is a bit surprising is that while our average mobile order value has been lower than our traditional average order value, consumers have still seemed willing to buy higher price point items through a mobile device,” she says. “Customers have purchased products that sell for over $500 and even a few over $1,000.” She believes the trend will increase as customers continue to become more comfortable with mobile commerce.

Lamps Plus selected Branding Brand to create its mobile site, Hsu says, in part to get it up more quickly than the retailer could do on its own. Another draw was Branding Brand’s work designing mobile sites for other large e-retailers, including Sephora, GNC and Steve Madden, Hsu says. She adds that Lamps Plus wants to continue to enhance and tweak the site over time and that the retailer has weekly calls with the vendor to discuss how to improve the site.

Branding Brand designed and manages mobile commerce sites for 30 retailers in the Top 500 guide.